The invention relates to multiple head gang saws, including slat beds, roll feeds and multiple beam machines.
In a multiple head gang saw, a plurality of moveable saw heads provide variable width cutting, for example to cut a workpiece into a plurality of parallel slats of desired width. In the prior art, each moveable saw head has its own dedicated position or displacement transducer for indicating the linear displacement of that saw head from a reference point. Displacement of the moveable saw head is sensed by a transducer which monitors rotation of a screw drive or a pinion driving a rack. These types of transducer arrangements may not be precise enough for close tolerance applications and suffer some slop particularly with age and wear.